The present invention relates to a system and method for creating, processing and managing educational content. More specifically, the present invention relates to an Educational Content Communications System (xe2x80x9cECCSxe2x80x9d) that enables students, teachers, parents, and administrators (including staff) to access, share, create, input, manage, store and/or deliver educational content. The ECCS is designed to create, process and manage educational content within a school, within and between a system of schools, within and between a community of schools, and within and between third-party providers of educational content.
Over the last few years, public and private schools in the United States have paid out large sums of money to purchase personal computers and connect these computers to the Internet. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, technology spending has grown from $2.1 billion to $5.4 billion. Local, State and Federal funds have greatly contributed to this effort and have helped ensure that over 90% of our schools are now connected to the Internet on some level. One of the largest contributors to this effort is E-rate, a two and a half billion annual federal fund run by the School and Libraries Division (SLD) that subsidizes kindergarten through Twelfth grade (xe2x80x9cK-12xe2x80x9d).
Even with these investments, however, schools can derive only a small fraction of the potential benefit from their investment without an ECCS that enables the school""s personal computers to access, share, input, manage, process, store and/or deliver educational content. Users or potential users of such an ECCS include the students, teachers, parents and administrators (including staff) of a school or district.
Unfortunately, many schools have taken the approach of not doing anything to develop an ECCS after investing in technology and access to the Internet. Many schools have little or no funds left in the budget after making their computer purchases and no staff with any particular expertise in designing, installing and maintaining information systems or in even understanding the potential benefits that might be achieved with an ECCS. For those schools that have attempted to develop an ECCS, the most common approach has been to purchase, install, and maintain a network to link the personal computers. To do this, schools have typically looked to the available off-the-shelf commercial networks such as Novell(copyright), Lotus(copyright) Notes, and Microsoft(copyright) Exchange.
The costs of a private network make it prohibitive for many schools and are a significant financial drain for those schools that pursue this approach. The costs of the capital equipment, installation and ongoing maintenance of this type of network are significant with estimates from Microsoft(copyright) ranging up to $130 per user, per year. Depending on the school, the federal E-Rate program can provide anywhere from 20 to 90 percent of the funds for purchasing some, but not all, of the needed infrastructure and Internet access. The fund does not, however, cover any of the costs involved in the salaries of the people needed to keep such a system up and running (easily over half the cost of the system on an ongoing basis).
The few present networks that have been installed by schools are limited in that the users can only access the school""s educational content from the personal computers within the school. Users are soon frustrated by the fact that their network is not accessible from all machines within the school or from machines outside the school. A school with an in-house network could try to implement this functionality by providing remote access capabilities but many who have investigated this have quickly learned that once faced with opening their closed network they expose themselves to security issues and viruses requiring even more hardware, software and support.
A further drawback to a private network is that such a network does not address the challenges presented by educational content from third-party providers. Many companies today are offering students a variety of Web-based educational services through the Internet. Third party programs are any type of content or information from these companies that needs to be delivered to a select user or group of users. Such examples of third party programs include, though are not limited to student assistance programs, supplemental information to help with a course or textbook, Web delivered applications, teacher training, parent consulting, video conferencing, grade books, attendance records and more. One of the main problems in managing this information is that each of these companies have their own Web sites with their own method of access and unique user identification and password. Schools would like, but do not have, an ECCS that can manage what third-party educational content programs each user or groups of users is authorized to access and that can provide a common access method in which the Web-based programs can be accessed from the ECCS.
Finally, an even larger payoff on schools"" technology expenditures can be achieved if the ECCS can be linked to other schools. Administrators responsible for a system of schools such as a school district or a group of parochial schools would like, but do not presently have, a means to process and manage the educational content within a system of schools. In addition, groups sharing common interest would like, but do not have, a means to process and manage educational content between schools and districts including those that are not within any common school district or located outside their own. Schools would like this capability but this is not a feature that is feasible to implement with each school building their own private networks.
It was with this understanding of the problems of the prior art that formed the impetus for the present invention.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an ECCS that enables the users of one or more schools to create, process and manage the educational content of the school(s).
It is another object of the present invention to provide an ECCS that does not require a school or system of schools to purchase any hardware or software to obtain ECCS functions.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an ECCS that is accessible by any communications device that has browser capabilities and access to the Internet, regardless of whether the communications device is located inside or outside the school.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an ECCS that will work with any public or private network that the school or school system has access to, including the Internet.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an ECCS that will enable the users of one school to process and manage educational content between other schools that are linked to the ECCS.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an ECCS that will enable administrators of a system of schools to process and manage educational content within a system of schools.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an ECCS that will enable a school or system of schools to process and manage educational content from third party providers and make it available to their students by a single user identification and password.
These, as well as other objects and advantages of the present invention, will become apparent in light of the following description, which details, by way of example, various aspects and features of the present invention.
Accordingly, generally speaking, and without intending to be limiting, one aspect of the present invention relates to an ECCS, preferably implemented over the Internet, which permits schools to make their educational content available to any school user with access to a communications device with browser capabilities and access to the Internet. The school""s users can include, but do not have to be limited to, students, teachers, parents and administrators. The educational content is accessed, created, inputted, managed, processed stored and/or delivered using means which include, but are not limited, common calendars, file sharing, class room pages, club pages (for sports, clubs and other programs), e-mail and creation and posting of common links, and other means which will be discussed in more detail.
Again, generally speaking, and without intending to be limiting, another aspect of the present invention relates to an ECCS for managing educational content within a system of schools, whether it be a school district, county grouping of school districts, parochial school system or any other organized set of schools. This aspect of the present invention provides the ability for administrators of a system of schools to manage the educational content within a system of schools.
Again, generally speaking, and without intending to be limiting, another aspect of the present invention relates to an ECCS for managing school communities. Any type of sub-group community from within any or all the schools who are connected to the ECCS can be defined so that students, teachers, parents and administrators can process and manage educational content related to that community. These communities can cover any group the schools want to define such as the math club, the 7th grade social studies teachers, the chess club, sports teams, etc.
Again, generally speaking, and without intending to be limiting, another aspect of the present invention relates to an ECCS for processing and managing third-party educational content. This aspect of the present invention permits administrators or other select users of schools or system of schools to provide users, whether they are students, teachers, parents or administrators, with access to Web-based third-party educational content through a single interface and without the necessity of knowing multiple user identifications and passwords.
The present invention is implemented through hardware and software, which provides each school or system of schools with its own Web site, which is accessible by typing its address on any Web browser. The Web site can serve as the school""s communications portal, home page and/or virtual desktop through which the school""s users can access the invention""s ECCS functions. While the Internet is preferable, the present invention could also be implemented over a private intranet using different protocols. The present invention includes at least one server computer and at least one client computer including, respectively, server and client processors for executing server and client programs; and server and client input and output elements for communication between said server and client computer.
The above and other features will be more fully appreciated in view of a specific illustrative example presented hereinbelow in conjunction with the accompanying figures.